Word by word

I picked this book up from a Little Free Library knowing nothing about it and never having heard about it. Thank goodness I did. I've always loved words and old reference books. As a kid, using the dictionary was one of my favorite things to do. Still today, I look up words while reading all the time. Word by Word taught me more about how a dictionary is created than I ever thought there was to know about the process. But more than that, it taught me more about words and their use than any other education or book has. I can write. I can read. I can look up. Now I understand why words like "a" "to" "for" and the like are so useful. Plus, and not to be overlooked, Kory Stamper is a wonderful writer. She moves from humorous to serious in a breath and does both with elegance. She is a joy to read.

This is a book written by someone who loves words, for people who love words. It serves several purposes simultaneously, and handles them all beautifully:

Journalling the author's lexicography career, from sweaty interviews to "making it"

He sat impassive across from me as I blithered, awash in flop sweat and aware—perhaps for the first time since I answered the want ad—that I really, really wanted this job, and I was really, really rambling.

All a word needs to merit entry into most professionally written dictionaries is widespread and sustained use in written English prose.

The fact is that many of the things that are presented to us as rules are really just the of-the-moment preferences of people who have had the opportunity to get their opinions published and whose opinions end up being reinforced and repeated down the ages as Truth.

Someone doesn’t know, for instance, that we list definitions in chronological order and so is upset that the “whorehouse” sense of “stew” shows up before the “thick soup” sense does.

Here is the one thing that our pronunciation editor wishes everyone knew: those dots in the headwords, like at “co·per·nic·i·um,” are not marking syllable breaks, as is evident by comparing the placement of the dots with the placement of the hyphens in the pronunciations. Those dots are called “end-of-line division dots,” and they exist solely to tell beleaguered proofreaders where, if they have to split a word between lines, they can drop a hyphen.

The linguistic process by which “nuclear” became \ˈnü-kyə-lər\ is called “metathesis,” where two phonemes within a word switch positions.10 This is the process that gave us the standard pronunciations of “iron” (“EYE-urn” instead of “EYE-run”) and “comfortable” (“KUMF-ter-bul” instead of “KUM-fert-uh-bul”) and other nonstandard pronunciations like “PURR-tee” for “pretty.”

We think of English as a fortress to be defended, but a better analogy is to think of English as a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don’t want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned electrical sockets.

Of course “irregardless” is a made-up word that was entered into the dictionary through constant use; that’s pretty much how this racket works. All words are made-up

“Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis”—a word that puzzlers and lexicographers call “P45”—sure looks like and sounds like the name of a great disease, and it is entered in our Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition, but it does not have any meaningful use. In fact, it appears to have been coined by the president of the National Puzzlers’ League in 1935 just to see if dictionaries would fall for it. We did. We’re a little more careful now.

Who thought that “pumpernickel” was a good name for a dark rye bread? Because when you trace the word back to its German origins, you find it means “fart goblin,” and now you cannot help but blench and giggle whenever you see pumpernickel.

Peter Sokolowski remembers being in the hallway outside the pronunciation editor’s office one day and hearing from within the office a very measured voice say, as blandly as possible, “Motherfucker. Motherfucker. Motherfucker.” It was one of our old pronunciation editors, trying to get the intonation right for the audio file. He left a few years later to become a priest.

I hadn’t just fallen down this rabbit hole: I saw that hole in the distance and ran full tilt at it, throwing myself headlong into it. The more I learned, the more I fell in love with this wild, vibrant whore of a language.

Oh, this was lovely. I kind of always want to know exactly what it is that other people do all day, so finding out in detail not just how modern dictionaries work, but also the politics and intricacies of being a lexicographer (and how Kory Stamper feels when she checks her e-mails) was deeply satisfying. Stamper does a great job of making every detail of the dictionary-writing process accessible. Each chapter focuses on a principle highlighted by a specific word and start very basic (like how hard it is to categorize parts of speech) and venture into the quite abstract (the way that implicit biases affect definitions and how the definitions used can be perceived by readers.)

The strongest thread throughout the book is basically an ode to descriptivist linguistics as well as a dismissal of the prescriptivist (and, to be frank, neurotic) approach that Stamper perceives in amateur logophiles.

Overall, the book is personal, funny and educational - a rare combination. If I had one complaint, it would be that the self-deprecation wears very thin, but that's easy to overlook with so much more to like.